More troops to Iraq? Six questions Pentagon needs to answer first.

Here are six of the big questions the Pentagon is grappling with, even as calls for more troops to the region continue.

4. Would US troops really encourage Iraq to enact political reforms?

Carolyn Kaster/AP
President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (l.) participate in a bilateral meeting during the G-7 summit in Schloss Elmau hotel near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany, on June 8, 2015.

Even if the US is sending troops in the hopes that trainers give the US more leverage to push the Iraqi government to reform, is this a logical and realistic aspiration, or is it a pipe dream? 

If reconciliation among Iraq's Shiite and Sunni factions is the goal, that process "was always best when we were the mediators and helped them along," says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to former Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq.

To that end, Dr. Mansoor, now associate professor of military history at Ohio State University, argues that the US should do even more than training. US troops "have to embed [with Iraqi forces] and they have to fight" in the course of embedding with front-line Iraqi troops. "This is how we develop an army that's competent and, in the end, it's going to help the prime minister get control of parts of the society that lean sectarian."

But this view is part of widespread “fallacy” about Iraq, Scharre says. While US troops could potentially give the US more leverage to force Iraq to solve its sectarian problems, “in other cases it gives us less leverage, because it exposes us, in terms of physical risk to our troops.” 

The more US troops on the ground, “the more we’re invested,” Scharre adds. “And getting out is a lot harder than getting in.” 

 

 

4 of 6

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.